


for the love of a warrior

by beckawrites



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: F/M, inspired by an edit, knights of the round table - Freeform, period au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:43:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7638898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckawrites/pseuds/beckawrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>no amount of armor and training can ever prepare a knight for the way love knocks the wind out of their lungs, makes them desperate for the air that only the other can breathe into them.</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	for the love of a warrior

i.

he knows she’s special from the moment he sees her. she is the only girl (no, she isn’t just a girl - she is a woman, brave and fierce, he can see it in her eyes) recruited to be a knight, the only woman that the king is daring to take a risk on. she is just as capable as any of them, he can tell just from looking at her.

but no matter what he thinks, he isn’t at all prepared to be proven so right.

ii.

the two of them quickly found a solace in the other, a kind of comfort in knowing that the other had a somewhat similar obstacle to keep them from being taken seriously by everyone else: he was looked down upon because he wasn’t a nobleman, and she was viewed as nothing but a liability because she was a woman.

somehow they gravitated towards each other, and perhaps it was because they sought comfort and assurance in the same way that they managed to become a small sanctuary for the other, granting serenity in the form of touch. when there were no words to soothe the aching soreness of a hard day’s work, a simple touch of the hand could offer the reminder that the pain wasn’t being suffered in vain, that they were not suffering alone.

iii.

she thinks she falls in love with the feeling of his hand on her knee before anything else.

iv.

he has never come so close to death than on the day when the king decides that he is worthy of being a knight at the round table. his heavy armor (it had never felt like it weighed so much until that night, as if he head the entire kingdom, the entire world, on his shoulders) is the only thing that keeps him alive, his armor and his sword, and her.

the two of them fight together, worked as a team like they had for the months they had spent training to be knights, to do exactly what they were doing now, defending their king. somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that she is covered in traitorous blood and that her hands would tremble for the lives she took, that her bones would shake until she could not sleep. but she can worry about the nightmares when they come.

for now, she has to make sure he doesn’t die.

v.

they are not sure how they end up here, in one of the hundreds of empty rooms in the king’s exquisite palace, but here they are, doing the very thing everyone has thought they were doing for ages, that they haven’t done until now, until they almost lost the other forever.

armor clanks to the floor with terribly loud thuds, and it is as though an incredible weight lifts off her when the last of it falls off and clanks to the floor, when he finally gets out of his metal skin and there isn’t anything proper or noble or knightly about this, the way they stare at each other, but he couldn’t possibly care about anything other than the moonlight falling in through the window and making her look like an angel.

he would forsake his god at any moment if she told him so, told him that she was his new goddess to pray to.

it only takes her a moment to realize that they have been still much too long, and she pulls him close again, wants nothing more than for him to remind her that he is real and alive and there. 

she almost feels swallowed by him when he pushes her onto the bed, and she adds new scars to his skin with her own hands, paints him red while he leaves her black and blue in a way that makes her want this every single day.

vi.

she is gone before he wakes in the morning, because they cannot be found like this, not because they’re knights, but because she is still a woman and there are still so many rules about what she can and can’t do, and what she’s just done with him is on the top of the cannot, must not list. 

(she really doesn’t give a damn about it, but her family does.)

if he gives her a look the next day at the ceremony, a questioning look that begs him to tell her what he did wrong, she pretends not to notice.

vii.

it does not take her very long to let herself be cornered by him, to let him kiss her again because it’s been too long (it’s only been a fortnight, but by god above, anything longer than a day is much too long to be without him.) it takes even less time for him to hold onto her as if she were the only thing anchoring his raging sea of a soul.

and perhaps it was. his eyes were so blue she wondered how she had not drowned in him yet.

viii.

wouldn’t that be the loveliest way to die?

ix.

being with her makes it easier to breathe. he is braver and feels steadier on his feet after nothing but a simple smile she decides to honor him with. he thinks this might be what love is, the way he never wants her to be hurt and how perfectly her hand fits in his, how she curls against him when they’re alone.

he’s never been sure about very many things in his life, he’s never been one to believe in much, but he believes that this, the way his heart thunders like a storm in his chest when she kisses him, it has to be love. what else could it possibly be?

there’s no other word for how he makes her skin feel warm with just a touch, or how when he tells her that he knows she can handle any task put before her, she believes him.

if the way she feels like her heart belongs in his big, rough hands, and how he feels that his heart would be safer tucked in her armor isn’t love, then they needn’t ever find out what love is, for if it was bigger than this, it could swallow them whole.

x.

the first time the words pass her lips, they fall out, tumble past her lips in a rush of air, fall at his feet before he can possibly catch them.

except, he does.

he catches them, tucks them away to keep forever, and kisses her until she’s saying it over and over, like a new prayer she’s trying to memorize.

he says it like a prayer he’s known all along.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this](http://daishannigans.tumblr.com/post/122551453796/medieval-kingsman-knightsau)


End file.
